“THOMAS.”
A sweet voice. Calling his name. Like honey. Thomas.
“Thomas, wake up.”
A woman’s voice. Her hand was on his cheek. He was waking, but he wasn’t sure if he was really awake yet. The hand on his cheek could be part of a dream. For a moment, he let it be a dream.
He relished that dream. This was Monique’s hand on his cheek. The strong-headed French woman who’d been horrified that he might actually die. Thomas! she’d cried. Thomas!
No, no. This wasn’t Monique. This was Rachelle. Yes, that was better. Rachelle was kneeling beside him, caressing his cheek with her hand. Leaning over him, whispering his name. Thomas. Her lips were reaching out to touch his lips. Time to wake the handsome prince.
“Thomas?”
He jerked his eyes open. Blue sky. Waterfall. Rachelle.
He gasped and sat up. He was still on the beach where he’d fallen asleep during the night. He glanced around. No animals were in sight. No Roush. Only Rachelle.
“Do you remember?” she asked.
He did remember. The lake. Diving deep. Ecstasy. It still lingered here on the sound of the waterfall.
“Yes. I’m beginning to remember,” he said. “What time is it?”
“Midday. The others are preparing.”
He also remembered the Crossing and Teeleh’s claim that he’d crash-landed. “They’re preparing for what?”
“For the Gathering tonight.” She said it as though he should know this.
“Of course.” He looked at the lucent waters that stretched across the lake, tempted to swim again. Could he just dive in anytime he wanted to? He pushed himself to his knees. “Actually, I don’t remember everything just yet.”
“What don’t you remember?”
“Well . . . I don’t know. If I knew, I would remember. But I think I understand the Great Romance. It’s about Elyon.”
Her eyes lit up. “Yes.”
“It’s about choosing and rescuing and winning love because that’s what Elyon does.”
“Yes!” she cried.
“And it’s something we do because we are like Elyon in that way.”
“You’re saying that you want to choose me?”
“I am?”
She arched a brow. “And now you’re trying to be tricky about it by pretending that you’re not. But really you’re desperate for my love, and you want me to be desperate for your love.”
He knew that she was exactly right. It was the first time he could admit it to himself, but hearing her say it, Thomas knew that he was falling in love with this woman who knelt by him on the banks of the lake. He was meant to woo her, but she was wooing him.
She was waiting for him to say something.
“Yes,” he said.
Rachelle jumped to her feet. “Come!”
He pushed himself up and brushed the sand from his seat. “What should we do?”
“We should walk through the forest,” she said with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “I will help you remember.”
“Remember the forest?”
They started up the slope. “I was thinking other thoughts. But that would be nice too.”
She turned back and stopped. “What is that?”
He followed her eyes and saw it clearly. A large blotch of red discolored the white sand where he’d slept.
Blood.
He blinked. His dream? The fight in the hotel flashed through his mind.
No, it couldn’t be. It was only a dream. He had no wounds.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I swam through some red waters in the lake, maybe from that?”
“You never know what will happen with Elyon,” she said. “Only that it will be wonderful. Come.”
They left the lake. But the red stain on the sand lingered in Thomas’s mind. There was the possibility, however remote, that he was different from Rachelle. That he really wasn’t from here. That Rachelle was falling in love with someone who wasn’t what he seemed.
That Teeleh was right.
An hour later the thought was gone.
They walked and laughed, and Rachelle toyed with his mind in lovely ways that only strengthened his resolve to win her. Very slowly they began to set aside the charade and embrace something deeper.
She showed him three new combat moves Tanis had shown her, two aerial and one from a prone position, in the event one fell while fighting, she said. He managed them all, but never with the same precision she demonstrated. Once she had to catch him when he toppled off balance toward her.
She had rescued him. He found it immensely appealing.
He immediately returned the favor by fighting off a hundred phantom Shataiki, sweeping her from her feet in the process. Unlike Tanis and Palus, he did not fall. It was quite a feat, and he began to feel very good about himself.
Rachelle sauntered beside him, hands clasped behind her back, lost in thought.
“Tell me more about your dreams,” she said without looking at him.
“They’re nothing. Nonsense.”
“Oh? That’s not what Tanis thinks. I want to know more. How real are they?”
Tanis was talking about his dreams? The last thing on Earth Thomas wanted to do right now was discuss his dreams. Particularly with Rachelle. But he couldn’t very well lie to her. “They seem real enough. But they’re the histories. A totally different reality.”
“Yes, so you’ve said. So it’s like you’re really living in the histories?”
“When I’m dreaming? Yes.”
“And what do you think of this place”—she motioned to the trees— “in your dreams?”
It was the worst question she could have asked. “Actually, when I’m dreaming it’s like I’m there, not here.”
“But when you’re there, do you remember this place?”
“Sure. It’s . . . it’s like a dream.”
She nodded. “So I’m like a dream?”
“You’re not a dream.” Thomas could feel himself sinking. “You’re walking right beside me, and I have chosen you.”
“I’m not sure I like these dreams of yours.”
“And neither do I.”
“You have a mother and a father in these dreams?”
“Yes.”
“You have a full life, with memories and passions and all that makes us human?”
This was positively not good.
She stopped on the path when he didn’t respond. “What are you doing in your dreams?”
He had to tell her at some point. She’d forced the issue now. “You really want to know?”
“Yes. I want to know everything.”
Thomas paced, thinking of the best way to put it so that she could understand. “I’m living in the histories, before the Great Deception, trying to stop the Raison Strain. Trust me, it’s a horrible thing, Rachelle. It’s so real! Like I’m really there, and all of this here is a dream! I know it’s not, of course, but when I’m there, I also know that is real.” Was this a good way to put it? Somehow he doubted there was a good way to put it.
He continued before she could ask another question. Better that he control the direction of his confession.
“And yes, I have a full history in my dreams. Memories, a family, the full textures of real life.”
“That’s absurd,” she said. “You’ve created a fantasy world with as much detail as the real one. Even more because in your dreams you haven’t lost your memories. You have your own history there, but here you don’t. Is that it?”
“Exactly!”
“It’s preposterous!”
“I can hardly stand it. It’s maddening. Just before you woke me up by the lake, I was fighting a man who was intent on killing me. I think he did kill me! Three shots with a gun to the body.” He tapped his chest.
“Really? A gun? Some kind of fanciful weapon, I assume. And why were you fighting this man?”
Thomas spoke without thinking. “He was trying to capture Monique.”
“Monique. A woman?”
“A woman who means nothing to me!” No, that wasn’t completely honest. “Not in a romantic way.”
“You’re in love with another woman in your dreams?”
“Of course not. Not at all. Her name is Monique de Raison, and she may be the key to stopping the Raison Strain. I’m helping her because she may help me save the world, not because she’s beautiful. I can’t just ignore her because you don’t want me dreaming about her.”
Too much information.
He was sure he saw a flash in Rachelle’s eyes. Jealousy obviously was a sentiment that flowed from Elyon’s veins. “You talk as if your dreams are more important than reality. Do you doubt that any of this is real?” She swept her hand to indicate the forest again. “That I am real? That our romance is real?”
“Never. Only when I’m dreaming.”
He had to stop before he lost her completely.
Rachelle stared at him for a long time. He decided to keep his mouth shut. It was doing him no favors. She crossed her arms and looked away.
“I don’t like these dreams of yours, Thomas Hunter. I really wish that you would stop them.”
“I’m sure they will stop. I don’t like them either.”
“You are here. With me. I watched you sleep on the shores of the lake just an hour ago. Believe me when I say you weren’t fighting a man, and you weren’t killed. Your body was here! If I’d pinched you, you would have woken.”
“That’s right. And there was no Monique. It’s just a dream, I know. I’m here. With you.”
Her features softened. “Maybe your dreams are nothing more than a fascinating discovery. But I’m not sure how I feel about your dreaming of another woman when I’m in your arms. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly.”
Rachelle didn’t seem completely satisfied. “Other than trying to save the world, what do you do in the histories?”
“Well . . . I think I’m a writer. Though not a very good one, I’m afraid.”
“A storyteller! You’re a storyteller. Maybe that’s why you’re dreaming. You’ve hit your head, lost your memory, and forgotten how to tell stories like you did in your own village. But your subconscious hasn’t forgotten. You’re making up a grand story in your dreams!”
She just could be right. In fact, more likely than not.
“Maybe. What is Tanis saying?”
“That he and you might be successful in mounting an expedition to the black forest using information from your dreams of the histories. I think it’s just a storyteller’s fantasy, but he’s quite excited.”
Alarm spread through Thomas’s mind. Clearly Michal’s warning hadn’t affected Tanis.
“He said that?”
“Yes. If I hadn’t insisted on coming to the lake alone to find you when
Michal told us you were here, he would have come too. He says that he has some new ideas to share with you.”
Thomas made a mental note to avoid the man until he sorted this out.
“I’m glad you came alone,” he said.
“So am I.”
“And I’ll try not to dream.”
“Or better, dream of me.”
The gathering that night washed away any fears and doubts lingering in Thomas’s mind. They swept up the path to the lake, silent during the last half of the fifteen-minute trek. Thomas ran onto a patch of white sand on the right side of the lake. He absently realized that the red blotch was gone.
As far as memory permitted, this was his first Gathering.
A warm mist from the waterfall already floated across the group. Many of the people were already prone on the sand, their hands outstretched toward the thundering water.
Thomas fell to his knees, heart pounding with anticipation. It had been too long, far too long. A warm mist suddenly hit his face. His vision exploded with a red fireball and he gasped, sucking more of the mist into his lungs.
Elyon.
He was aware of the wetness tickling his tongue. The sweetest taste of sugar laced with a hint of cherry flooded his mouth. He swallowed. The aroma of gardenia blossoms mushroomed in his nostrils.
Ever so gently, Elyon’s water engulfed him, careful not to overpower his mind. But deliberately.
The red fireball suddenly melted into a river of deep blue that flowed into the base of Thomas’s skull and wound its way down his spine, caressing each nerve. Intense pleasure shot down every nerve path to Thomas’s extremi-ties. He dropped to his belly, body shaking in earnest.
Elyon.
The waterfall’s pounding increased in intensity, and the mist fell steadily on his back as he lay prostrate. His mind reeled under the power of this Creator, who spoke with sights and colors and smells and emotions.
Then the first note fell on his ears. Flew past his ears and bit into his mind. A low note, lower than the throaty roar of a million tons of fuel thundering from a rocket’s base. The rumbling tone shot up an octave, rose to a forte, and began etching a melody in Thomas’s skull. He could hear no words, only music. A single melody at first, but then joined by another melody, entirely unique yet in harmony with the first. The first caressed his ears; the second laughed. And a third melody joined the first two, screaming in pleasure. And then a fourth and a fifth, until Thomas heard a hundred melodies streaming through his mind, each one unique, each one distinct.
All together not more than a single note from Elyon.
A note that cried, I love you.
Thomas breathed in great gasps now. He stretched his arms out before him. His chest heaved on the warm sand. His skin tingled with each minute droplet of mist that touched him.
Elyon.
Me too! Me too! he wanted to say. I love you too.
He wanted to yell it. To scream it with as much passion as he felt from Elyon’s water now. He opened his mouth and groaned. A dumb, stupid groan that said nothing at all, and yet it was him, talking to Elyon.
And then he formed the words screaming in his mind. “I love you, Elyon,” he breathed softly.
Immediately, a new burst of colors exploded in his mind. Gold and blue and green cascaded over his head, filling each fold of his brain with delight.
He rolled to one side. A hundred melodies swelled into a thousand— like a heavy, woven chord blasting down his spine. His nostrils flared with the pungent smell of lilac and rose and jasmine, and his eyes watered with their intensity. The mist soaked his body, and each inch of his skin buzzed with pleasure.
Thomas shouted, “I love you!”
He felt as though he stood in an open doorway on the edge of a vast expanse, bursting with raw emotion that was fabricated in colors and sights and sounds and smells, blasting into his face like a gale. It was as though Elyon flowed like a bottomless ocean, but Thomas could taste only a stray drop. As though he were a symphony orchestrated by a million instruments, and a single note threw him from his feet with its power.
“I love youuuu!” he cried.
He opened his eyes. Long ribbons of color streamed through the mist above the lake. Light spilled from the waterfall, lighting the entire valley so it looked as though it might be midday. The entire company lay prone as the mist washed over their bodies. Most shook visibly but made no sound that could be heard above the waterfall. Thomas let his head drop back to the sand.
And then Elyon’s words echoed through his mind.
I love you.
You are precious to me.
You are my very own.
Look at me again, and smile.
Thomas wanted to scream. Unable to contain himself, Thomas let the words flow from his mouth like a flood.
“I will look at you always, Elyon. I worship you. I worship the air you breathe. I worship the ground you walk on. Without you, there is nothing. Without you, I’ll die a thousand deaths. Don’t ever let me leave you.”
The sound of a child giggling. Then the voice again.
I love you, Thomas.
Do you want to climb up the cliff?
Cliff? He saw the pearl cliffs over which the water poured.
A voice called over the lake. “Who has made us?” Tanis was on his feet, crying out this challenge.
Thomas struggled to his feet. The rest were scrambling to their feet. They yelled together above the thundering falls, “Elyon! Elyon is our Creator!”
Like a display of fireworks, the colors continued to expand in his mind. He gazed about, momentarily stunned. None of the others looked his way. Their display was simple abandonment to affection, foolish in any other context, but completely genuine here.
The voice of the child suddenly echoed through his mind again.
Do you want to climb the cliff?
Thomas spun toward the forest that ended at the cliff. Climb the cliff? Behind him the others started running into the lake.
Giggling again.
Do you want to play with me?
Now inexplicably drawn, Thomas ran up the shore toward the cliff. If the others noticed, they showed no sign. Soon only his own panting accompanied the thundering falls.
He cut into the forest and approached the cliffs with a sense of awe. How could he possibly climb this? He considered turning back and joining the others. But he had been called here. To climb the cliffs. To play. He ran on.
He reached its base, looked up. There was no way he could climb the smooth stone wall. But if he could find a tree that grew close to the cliff, and if the tree was tall enough, he might be able to reach the top along its branches. The tree right beside him, for example. Its glowing red trunk reached to the cliff ’s lip a hundred meters up.
Thomas swung himself up onto the first branch and began his ascent. It took him no more than a couple of minutes to reach the treetop and climb out to the cliff. He dropped from the branch to the stone surface below. To his left he could hear the thundering waterfall as it poured over the edge. He stood up and raised his eyes.
Before him, water lapped gently on a shore not more than twenty paces from the cliff ’s edge. Another lake. A sea, much larger than the lake. Shimmering green waters stretched to the horizon, neatly bordered by a wide swath of white sand, which edged into a towering blue-and-gold forest topped by a green canopy.
Thomas stepped back and drew a deep breath. The white sandy swath bordering the emerald waters was lined with strange beasts who stood or crouched at the water’s edge. The animals were like the white lions below, but these seemed to glow with pastel colors. And they lined the beach in evenly spaced increments that continued as far as he could see.
He spun to the waterfall and saw at least a hundred creatures hovering above the water cascading down the cliff, like giant dragonflies. Thomas eased back toward a rock behind him. Had they seen him? He studied the creatures hovering with translucent wings in a reverent formation. What could they possibly be doing?
So this was Elyon’s water. A sea that extended as far as the eye could see. Maybe farther.
“Hello.”
Thomas turned around. A little boy stood not five feet from him on the shore. Thomas stumbled back two steps.
“Don’t be afraid,” the boy said, smiling. “So, you’re the one who’s lost?”
The small boy stood to Thomas’s waist. His brilliant green eyes stared wide and round beneath a crop of very blond hair. His bony shoulders held thin arms that hung loosely at his sides. He wore only a small white loincloth.
Thomas swallowed. “Yes, I suppose so,” he said.
“Well, I see you’re quite adventurous. I believe you’re the first of your kind to walk these cliffs.” The boy giggled.
Incredible. For so small and frail a boy, he held himself with the confidence of someone much older. Thomas guessed he must be about ten. Although he certainly didn’t talk like a ten-year-old.
“Your name is Thomas?” the boy asked.
He knows my name. Is he from another village? Maybe my own? “Is this okay? I can be up here?”
“Yes. You’re perfectly all right. But I don’t think any of the others could get past the lake to bother climbing the cliff.”
“Are you from another village?” he asked.
The boy stared at him, amused. “Do I look like I’m from another village?”
“I don’t know. No, not really. Am I from another village?”
“I suppose that’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Then do you know who called me?”
“Yes. Elyon called you. To meet me.”
There was something about the boy. Something about the way he stood with his feet barely pressing into the white sand. Something about the way his thin fingers curled gently at the end of his arms; about the way his chest rose and fell steadily and the way his wide eyes shone like two flawless emeralds. The boy blinked.
“Are you like a . . . Roush?”
“Am I like a Roush? Well, yes, in a way. But not really.” The boy raised an arm to the hovering dragonfly creatures without looking their way. “They are like Roush, but you may think of me however you want now.” He turned his head to the line of lionlike creatures lining the sea. “They are known as Roshuim.”
Thomas eyed the boy. “You . . . you’re greater, aren’t you? You have greater knowledge?”
“I know as much as I’ve seen in my time.”
The boy definitely wasn’t talking like a small boy. “And how long is that?” Thomas asked.
The child looked at him quizzically for a moment. “How long is what?”
“How long have you lived?”
“A very long time. But far too short to even begin to experience what I will experience in my time.”
The boy scratched the top of his head with one hand. He spoke again, staring out to the sea. “What is it like to come to Elyon after ignoring him for so long?”
“You know that? How do you know that?”
The boy’s eyes twinkled. “Do you want to walk?”
The boy turned to the white sandy shore and walked casually without looking back. Thomas glanced around and then followed him.
It was as light as day, although Thomas knew it was actually night.
“I saw you looking out over the water. Do you know how great this sea is?” the boy asked.
“It looks pretty big.”
“It extends forever,” the boy said. “Isn’t that something?”
“Forever?”
“That’s pretty clever, isn’t it?”
“Elyon can do that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s . . . that’s pretty clever.”
The boy stopped and walked to the water’s edge. Thomas followed him tentatively. “Scoop up some of the water,” the child said.
Thomas stooped, gingerly placed his hand into the warm green water and felt its power run up his arm the moment his fingers touched its surface— like a low-voltage electric shock that hummed through his bones. He scooped the water out and watched it drain between his fingers.
“Pretty neat, huh? And there’s no end to it. You could travel at many times the speed of light toward the center, and never reach it.”
It seemed incredible that anything could extend forever. Space, maybe. But a body of water? “That doesn’t seem possible,” Thomas said.
“It does when you understand who made it. It came from a single word. Elyon could open his mouth, and a hundred billion worlds like this would roll off his tongue. Maybe you underestimate him.”
Thomas looked away, suddenly embarrassed by his own stupidity. Did he underestimate him? How could anyone ever not underestimate someone so great?
The child reached up his frail hand and placed it in Thomas’s. “Don’t feel bad,” he said softly.
Thomas wrapped his fingers around the small hand. The boy looked up at him with wide green eyes, and more than anything Thomas had ever wanted to do, he desperately wanted to reach down and hold this child. They began walking again, hand in hand now. “Tell me,” Thomas asked. “There’s one thing that I’ve been wondering about.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been having some dreams. I fell in the black forest and lost my memory, and ever since then I’ve been dreaming of the histories.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Word gets around.”
“But can you tell me why I’m having these dreams? Honestly, I know this sounds ridiculous, but sometimes I wonder if my dreams are really real. Or if this is a dream. It would help if I knew for certain which reality was real.”
“Maybe I could help with a question. Is the Creator a lamb or a lion?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Some would say that the Creator is a lamb. Some would say he’s a lion. Some would say both. The fact is, he is neither a lamb nor a lion. These are fiction. Metaphors. Yet the Creator is both a lamb and a lion. These are both truths.”
“Yes, I can see that. Metaphors.”
“Neither changes the Creator,” the boy said. “Only the way we think of him. Like me. Am I a boy?”
Thomas felt the boy’s small hand, and his heart began to melt because he knew what the boy was saying. He couldn’t speak.
“A boy, a lion, a lamb. You should see me fight. You wouldn’t see a boy, a lion, or a lamb.”
Five minutes of silence passed without another word. They only walked, a man and a boy, hand in hand. But it wasn’t that. Not at all.
And then Thomas remembered his question about the dreams.
“What about my dreams?”
“Maybe it’s the same with your dreams.”
“That both are real?”
“You’ll have to figure that out.”
They walked on. It might have been a cloud, not sand, that they walked on, and Thomas wasn’t sure he’d know the difference. His mind was reeling. His hand was by his side, moving as he walked. In it was this boy’s hand. A tremble had set into his fingers, but the boy didn’t show he noticed.
Clearly he did.
“What about the black forest?” Thomas asked. “I’ve been in it. I may have taken a drink of the water. Is that why I’m dreaming about the histories?”
“If you’d chosen Teeleh’s water, everyone would know.”
Yes, that made sense.
“Then maybe you can tell me something else. How is it that Elyon can allow evil to exist in the black forest? Why doesn’t he just destroy the Shataiki?”
“Because evil provides his creation with a choice,” the child said as though the concept was very simple indeed. “And because without it, there could be no love.”
“Love?” Thomas stopped.
The boy’s hand slipped out of his. He turned, brow raised.
“Love is dependent on evil?” Thomas asked.
“Did I say that?” A mischievous glint filled the boy’s eyes. “How can there be love without a true choice? Would you suggest that man be stripped of the capacity to love?”
This was the Great Romance. To love at any cost.
The child turned back to the sea and gazed out.
“Do you know what would happen if anyone did choose Teeleh’s water instead of Elyon’s water?” the boy asked.
“Michal said the Shataiki would be freed. That they would bring death.”
“Death. More than death. A living death. Teeleh would own them; this is the agreement. Their minds and their hearts. The smell of their death would be intolerable to Elyon. And his jealousy will exact a terrible price.” The boy’s green eyes flashed as though strobes had been ignited behind them. “The injustice will be against Elyon, and only blood will satisfy him. More blood than you can possibly imagine.”
He said it so plainly that Thomas wondered if he’d misspoken. But the boy wasn’t the kind who misspoke.
Again, a word popped into his mind. Horde. He didn’t know what to do with the thought so he said the word aloud.
“Horde. Does it mean anything to you?”
The boy hesitated. “This is before the time of the Horde. Or after, depending on how you see it. It means nothing to you now.”
Thomas felt his curiosity connected to the word vanish. His concern for the people in the colored forest returned.
“If the people become Teeleh’s, is there a way to win them back?” he asked.
No response.
“Anyway, I can’t imagine anyone ever changing or leaving this place,” Thomas said.
“You don’t have to leave, you know.”
“Except when I dream.”
“Then don’t dream,” the boy said.
The idea suddenly sounded like such a simple solution. If he stopped dreaming, Bangkok would be no more?
“I can do that?”
“You could. There is a fruit you could eat that would stop your dreams.”
“Just like that, no more histories?”
“Yes. But the question is, do you really want to? You’ll have to decide. The choice is yours. You will always have that choice. I promise.”
It was early in the morning when the boy finally led Thomas back to the cliff, and after a great big bear hug, Thomas descended the red tree, made his way back to the village, and quietly sneaked into bed in the house of Palus.
He might have been mistaken, but he was sure that he could hear the sound of a boy’s voice singing as he drifted off to sleep.